SA For FAs
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366 episodes
Guest podcaster Jason Kirsch, CFP(R) discusses increasing demand for speculation among his younger clients. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The huge and rapid across-the-board gains of the current market make now the most relevant time to remind investors of the protective value of asset allocation. This podcast (5:46) argues that we should reduce risk and aspire to steady returns. While we cannot predict the future — indeed, because we cannot predict the future — we should plan our finances in such a way as to avoid calamitous outcomes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ron Surz’s new book “Baby Boomer Investing in the Perilous Decade of the 2020s” offers guidance on protecting lifetime savings that now reside in the crossfires of financial disaster. He is making the book available for free this week, through May 28, on Amazon. In this podcast (21:34), Surz explains why he believes the 2020s are a time of heightened risk, how boomers, who are most exposed, can protect themselves from this risk, and how even those who have saved insufficiently can live a dignified retirement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Intel’s detractors criticize the company for falling behind competitors in data-center sales, for reducing buybacks and for declining profit margins. But it is when a company is down that its stock price provides an attractive entry point. This podcast (8:05) argues that Intel’s problems are fixable and that its new leadership appears to be busy fixing them now. And in the meantime, its stock sells at a modest price-to-earnings ratio of 12, a fraction of the industry average. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Veteran investment research Laurence (Larry) Siegel’s response to all the doomsday stories in the daily news is his book “Fewer, Richer, Greener,” which offers a long view of the progress and economic growth our world has known, despite the proverbial bumps on the road. This podcast (20:40) challenges Siegel with a bit of the gloom and doom that we’re seeing. The financial analyst concedes that a sober view of markets is justified, but defends the view that the broader economy is progressing. In this interview and in his book, Siegel prefers to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Fed’s interventionist policies are the primary source of our current “everything rally,” and it is this same factor that will eventually upend it. This podcast (7:50) argues that discounted cash flows and other tools of fundamental analysis are compromised when the so-called risk-free rate of money has been openly distorted for so long, and why other factors are worthy of consideration. It also suggests that investors always be prepared for risk-off scenarios. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
At a time when oil majors are facing increasing pressure to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, a key question for investors concerns not which future technologies will prevail but who is helping these companies get rid of their methane right now. This podcast (6:40) argues that Baker Hughes’s solutions are performing right now in an area of rising regulatory scrutiny and hence growing market importance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ambev (ABEV) operates in a country reeling under pandemic, but Brazilians continue to drink beer, revenue is growing and investor fear of Brazil will eventually subside as a commodity boom lifts its currency. This podcast (7:28) argues that Ambev is already increasing revenue while cyclical factors should help it cut costs, fueling a renewed look by investors at an emerging-markets company with a popular product and solid customer base. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I have no regrets about missing out on a stock on my watchlist that moved up 700 percent this past year, but feel more regret for a value stock I failed to snatch before it moved up 25 percent. This podcast (6:21) argues that past experience, which in my case has shown that the market ultimately recognizes value, encourages me to hold cash while searching for value stocks with long runways, enabling me to enjoy the tranquility of a portfolio requiring just mild supervision. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The contemporary prophet Harry Dent Jr. says the stock market will collapse this month. The financial newsletter writer even added that he will quit his job if he is wrong. This podcast (6:21) warns that even the most brilliant economic sages – like the great American economist Irving Fisher – falter when they make predictions, because their vast knowledge does not endow them with this ability. Hoping to cure investors of their innate credulity, I summon the story of the Witch of Endor, which memorably illustrates the fraudulence of acts of divination. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
From Ancient Rome to Argentina under Peron to the U.S. over the past two decades, extreme spending unmoored to tax revenue has a hoary history ill befitting the title “Modern” Monetary Theory. This podcast (7:42) argues that MMT is not a theory awaiting adoption but rather a description of the bipartisan policy of the United States for some time now, though never more so than under its current “go big” moniker. But will “go big” become “go bankrupt?” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Argentine conglomerate Cresud lies at the intersection of real estate and commodities, sectors that tend to do well in periods of changing inflation expectations, and its P/E is just 5. This podcast (7:47) explores why the stock seems to be especially well positioned to thrive in the current period, while raising questions about management and deeper concerns about the political and economic environment that weighs down Argentina. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Government stimulus and Fed indifference are stoking an investor fear of inflation that has been dormant for decades. This podcast (6:07) looks at research by investment strategist Michael Crook indicating that a global-equity portfolio may offer the most protection against inflation. It also contains surprising findings about gold’s relationship to price changes and interest rates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The lesson I take from the GameStop affair is that the stock market does not necessarily reward investment sophistication but is exquisitely responsive to investment speculation. This podcast (4:29) argues that no matter how smart you as an individual may be, your chances of success in the stock market are overwhelmingly influenced by how dumb everyone else is. To succeed in such a market, we must take a self-consciously long-term approach, as if we’re purchasing shares for our grandchildren. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The dollar is worth about one-twenty-sixth of its value a century ago, and loose fiscal and monetary policies portend a deepening of the trend. This podcast (8:03) looks at the few currencies that have held up well to the dollar over a decade or more, reflecting underlying monetary and fiscal discipline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Financial advisor work should be regarded as a helping profession. This podcast (5:34) frames that notion via a few inspirational quotes from poets Edwin Markham and Rudyard Kipling, and Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion and anthropologist Margaret Mead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Analyst Marc Gerstein argues that senior secured loans are a safer bet than junk bonds, but even he considers them aggressive. This podcast (7:52) favors privately owned real estate as a source of income for those comfortable with that commitment, but suggests that accepting today’s low yields is a better choice than accepting a level of risk that can ruin your retirement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A new paper by David Blake of London’s Pensions Institute explains how nudges and peer-group networks further people along toward greater retirement security. This podcast (6:56) argues that instead of seeking peer-group validation, it would be far more helpful if younger people were paired with older people, a pairing financial advisors are uniquely capable of making, to everyone’s advantage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The story of America’s first celebrity economist, Irving Fisher, should cure anybody still milling about for expert predictions. This podcast (7:06) argues that investors, instead of spinning their heads listening to other people’s predictions, would do well to secure for themselves predictable income. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Society of Actuaries has released a report on over a dozen significant retirement risks. This podcast (8:32) suggests that investors needn’t sweat such lengthy checklists if they get the big issues right before entering retirement, and proposes a major issue people ought to concern themselves with but which nary gets a mention. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Warren Buffett offered some retirement advice a year ago, little noticed at the time, which is more relevant now than then. This podcast (7:24) recalls the Oracle of Omaha’s post-annual-letter CNBC interview, where Buffett advised people take appropriate due diligence on just what liabilities they’re “walking into.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The “The Baby Boomer Investing Show,” produced by Ron Surz and Kathy Tarochione, offers a perspective void of Wall Street sloganeering, combined with a rare financial sophistication. This podcast (8:34) considers why the lifecycle matters so much, explaining why near and new retirees shouldn’t risk what they cannot afford to lose. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
MassMutual’s Bob Carroll offers a front-row view of his firm’s response to the coronavirus crisis, with regard to retirement savers and advisors managing workplace plans. In the interview (20:32), Carroll shares a touching story of how the crisis brought competing advisors together to help their community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Investors need to step up and do the hard work of saving their own capital for retirement. This podcast (6:06) suggests that the calendar, that is to say the passage of time, is a less reliable guide to success than human effort and accomplishment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Financial Times reports that Calpers is seeking to juice returns through the use of leverage. This podcast (6:30) suggests a pension fund shouldn’t borrow heavily to goose up returns, especially as big institutions do not win all their bets. The conservative approach adopted by the Yale Endowment does far more to deliver returns and ensure the payment of pension benefits. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A slogan in retirement investing holds that investors who reach a certain level of success are free to reduce risk. This podcast (7:09) suggests that this idea merits quantitative definition and practical implementation, to ensure that future retirees do not face the same sense of impoverishment as the Class of 2020, who have seen their portfolios plunge at the time their retirement has required portfolio withdrawals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The advantage of financial advice is the outsider’s perspective, which is the reason so many professional fields of counseling, coaching and training continue to expand. This podcast (6:02) argues that just as a prisoner cannot free himself, so too it is the outsider that can provide the discipline or the method to get the person to make progress in the area of life he or she is challenged by. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Harbor Crest Wealth Advisors’ Mike Hennessy discusses Roth conversions, gifting strategies and qualified HAS funding distribution, planning strategies of particular value in 2020. This podcast (9:02) suggests there are creative planning strategies advisors can employ to help clients during these uniquely challenging times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A public service announcement meant to educate the public on the dangers of texting and driving reminds us that that all forms of distractedness, including financial, are dangerous. This podcast (6:56) suggests that financial advisors have a public-service role to play when the fact that financial calamity happens to 50 percent of retirees doesn’t impact the behavior of the distracted masses fumbling their finances. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Harbor Crest Wealth Advisors’ Mike Hennessy provides a big-picture view of the mortgage market’s interaction with Fed funds and the 10-year Treasury. This podcast (6:22) explains the host of factors influencing mortgage rates, including the surprising reason his own refi effort fell apart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
